


You, in Weird Cities

by allegheny



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: 2018 MLB Japan All-Star Series, Atlanta Braves, Friendship, Gen, Rookie of the Year - Freeform, Sushi, Washington Nationals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:31:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21865792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allegheny/pseuds/allegheny
Summary: You, laughing with meGetting lost in weird citiesLike we’ll never go backThe truth is, Juan discovers in a sushi restaurant, Ronnie and him aren’t different at all.
Relationships: Ronald Acuña Jr. & Juan Soto
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4
Collections: MLB Offseason Shortform Ficathon





	You, in Weird Cities

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [actualtaracole (freaking_intelligent_fangirl)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freaking_intelligent_fangirl/pseuds/actualtaracole) in the [mlb_offseason_shortform](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/mlb_offseason_shortform) collection. 

> **Prompt:**  
someone please write something about juan and ronnie acuña jr being friends. pls i'm dying.
> 
> I know I said I would write this in the mutants AU, but I got sidetracked :(

The truth is, Juan discovers in a sushi restaurant, Ronnie and him aren’t different at all. 

"I don't know. I'm scared." Ronnie says, poking the slice of tuna on top of his nigiri with the tip of his chopstick. 

"The shrimp one looks good." Juan says, partly because it's the only one that has cooked fish on top and he has no problem with cooked fish. Tentatively, he reaches over to take it, only for his badly-held chopsticks to slip from his grip. 

Ronnie snickers at him as he catches one just before it rolls off the table. Juan glares, squinting back. 

"Stop! I'm just not used to them! You've had practice!"

He never really ate Asian food back in Santo Domingo, and though he's been told that guys in the minors often survive on cheap Chinese takeaway, he didn't spend enough time down there to make learning to eat out of the boxes with something else than a fork a necessary measure to maintain face.  
Ronnie, on the other hand, grew up stuffing his face with Cantonese food in Caracas and still does now before every game. He holds the wooden utensils like a native. Now, Juan's a quick learner, but not that quick. The chopsticks have an obstinate way of escaping his fingers. He can't figure it out just yet, but he wants to, because he's a baseball player, and he's god damn competitive and can't take Ronnie's smug smile. 

He's a baseball player— a professional baseball player.  
It's not sunk in quite just yet. The season is barely over and they’d been shipped over to Hawaii, and then to Japan, right across the Pacific, further than Juan’s ever been from home, and it doesn’t make it any easier to hammer in that he’s a major leaguer for real.  
It feels as foreign as the food and décor in the small restaurant where they’ve slipped away while the American players get ferried around for promotion material.  
It had all gone so fast: this time six months ago he was a Double-A minor leaguer— and seven months ago only a low-A guy— and now here he was, part of MLB’s All-Star delegation to Japan, the whole world seemingly within reach. 

“You want the shrimp one because it’s actually cooked.” Ronnie accuses, wrinkling his nose. “The rest is all raw. Raw fish.”

The consternation on his face as he tries to gather the courage to pick up the piece of sushi would be so easy to make fun of if he didn’t relate. Raw fish is scary stuff. He’s down with his mama’s pescado con coco, but not really with these shiny pieces of red, pink, and yellow sea meat. 

“I think we should both try raw ones at the same time.” He wagers, trying to stabilize the chopsticks in his hands once again. 

Ronnie and him met as opponents, but they really couldn’t bring themselves to be rivals. Juan had seen that goofy smile and that bouncy braided head of hair, that guy dancing around and having fun, and he’d wanted to be his friend immediately. It really didn't matter if he was wearing Atlanta red.

They'd hit it off right away, exchanged phone numbers, and just like that, they were trotting up to each other before every Braves/Nats series. It wasn't that Juan didn't have friends in DC: there was Victor and Wilmer and even gringos like Trea and sometimes Harper who were great to chat with. But Ronnie was really becoming someone he could talk to, a confidant.  
So yeah, they're close, and that's no surprise. It's just he hadn't really noticed how similar they were. Ronnie is just so much more outgoing, so goofy and unafraid, taking life by the horns and laughing when the bull kicks. Juan doesn't have that kind of flower-throwing courage. He's not scared, or stuck up, by any means, on the contrary. But he'd always thought Ronnie was a different breed, in a good way. He’s like an open book. 

But now they're in Japan, taken out of their context, and it's like their edges are buffed. All of a sudden, looking at Ronnie is like looking in a mirror. Maybe it's the foreignness that brings them together, though they both met in yet another foreign land— which makes Juan wonder if Ronnie would have caught his attention had he met him in Santo Domingo. 

"Okay, but I'm not eating the pink one. Looks like undercooked chicken." Ronnie grimaces, his chopsticks falling onto the salmon nigiri instead. 

Maybe he would have: Ronnie's special. Ronnie's amazing at baseball, and really funny, and they like the same kind of music, and the same kind of video games. And it doesn't really matter that Ronnie's Venezuelan and really probably likes other boys and Ozzie Albies in particular. He's Juan's brother, and Juan loves him like one, he knows. As much as everyone wants to pit them against each other and pull them apart for the sake of a competition for Rookie of the Year, for a story, they're united. 

"Okay." Juan mutters, carefully adjusting the chopsticks between his fingers, and settling for the deep red one that looks like a slice of nice, bloody steak. 

On the count of three, they shove the balls of rice into their mouths.  
Eyes widen, they watch each other chewing, both observing the tasting journey unravelling on each other's faces. 

"Hey..." Ronnie says, mouth full. 

"This isn't that bad!"

"Right?"

"I mean, it's not the best but it's pretty tasty."

There's a beat, there's eye contact. And then they're both reaching for the same nigiri, yelping and slapping each other's hand off for the prize. 

Yeah, they really aren't different at all.

**Author's Note:**

> ** Hey!! Thanks for reading!! Please leave a comment if you liked it! :) **


End file.
